When I was young, there was a boy. He and I swam in the cold waters of Maligne Lake. The waters made us strange, so cold no sensible person would dare to swim in them. I was young and stupid. I told him that I would marry him, and he smiled at me with his big bright eyes and gave me a kiss. My father said I was stupid. I shouldn’t be thinking of marrying yet, and later when I’m older, I should be looking for a sensible man. My mother told me that I’ll later forget him. And when I became older, and my daughter began visiting every Saturday to keep me company, to make sure the nurse was treating me well, I began to see him again. So clearly in front of me: his deep brown eyes, always laughing and kind, shaded by dark little lashes under heavy, creased lids, and above them two soft eyebrows, thick with youth and happiness. His forehead was not too wide, and his cheeks were framed neatly by a proud jawline. At the centre, a rough, angled nose struck defiantly against the sun, the indentation below it, as small as the tip of my little finger, and red lips, inviting and warm, under which lay his round chin. As his face pulled away from me, I recognized his whispering brown hair, tossing carelessly in the cold summer air, dry from the swim we took an hour ago. His shoulders were just as strong and wide as I remembered them, his hand just brushing against my knee. His rough elbow leaned against mine. I breathed in the scent of trees and wild grasses, felt the sun against my bare feet and the prickle of twigs underneath my legs. And I saw the sun past the mountains, wondered what life would have been like if we had run away that day. Where we would have lived, who our children would be. If we would continue to swim in cold lakes together, or if we would live in a small house together, or if we would have eventually fallen apart because the world would not hold us upright. But we were children then and we did not run away.

As the sun set, his warm, smooth back against the cold air, and I rested myself against him, feeling how strong he was compared to me. In the end, neither of us proved strong. All I have left, of anything, is the image of our few days in summer spent together before both of us grew up.